Writing, writing and a bit of history, Plantagenets mainly

Its’ been a rather surreal week with the internment of the body of Richard III. A wonderful spectacle and hopefully a prompt for many schools and the public in general both in England and around the world, to learn more about King Richard III. In between many of the rather insipid ‘What do you reckon?’ interviews with various passers by (as aptly described in the Mitchell and Webb sketch below)

plus the usual regurgitation from Mr. Starkey, some of the messages about Richard III’s progressive views regarding religion, the law and publishing did come through.

The perfect choice to read this 14-line poem, written by Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy especially for the service of reinterment of Richard III at Leicester Cathedral, was Benedict Cumberbatch. A happy co-incidence for Cumberbatch is that he’s playing Richard III as part of the Hollow Crown series. It has also been revealed that he’s very very distantly related. Not bad PR for Mr Cumberbatch and I certainly don’t begrudge him it, he’s a wonderful talent. (One might say that distantly almost anyone in England is related – but I can almost guarantee that won’t include me!)

Richard

My bones, scripted in light, upon cold soil,
a human braille. My skull, scarred by a crown,
emptied of history. Describe my soul
as incense, votive, vanishing; your own
the same. Grant me the carving of my name.

These relics, bless. Imagine you re-tie
a broken string and on it thread a cross,
the symbol severed from me when I died.
The end of time – an unknown, unfelt loss –
unless the Resurrection of the Dead …

or I once dreamed of this, your future breath
in prayer for me, lost long, forever found;
or sensed you from the backstage of my death,
as kings glimpse shadows on a battleground.

We are so cynical and superficial these days that the whole process might seems almost laughable and yet, there is something spiritually intriguing around how ceremony, rites, prayers and collective thoughts can make us feel. The man doesn’t care, he’s dead – yet if there is some place beyond the grave, has some good been done?

More brilliant news for The End, my short horror film, directed by Raj Pathak (We are Heroes Films), (original story Pia Cooke). The film won the award for Best Actress at the British Horror Film Festival.

The British Horror Film Festival Awards were held at the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, London and Shelley Draper‘s powerful performance in The End, quite rightly, won her the best actress award. This is a great boost for the team involved as we’re currently seeking investment for our feature length version of the film. Hopefully more great news on that soon…

The hundreds of entries from around the world were whittled down to six short films and three features.

The shorts we were up against included:

Dans Le Noir – directed by Kate Tuck – a drama set in London in the first few days of a zombie attack, the piece was mixed with film-noir style scenes.

The Brain Hack – directed by Joseph White. This, to my mind, got one of the best receptions of the night and was one of the most popular films and walked away with many of the awards. I was gutted I actually arrived (unfashionably) too late to catch the film – but I’ll definitely be viewing it on Vimeo. I suggest you do too!

The Jigsaw – Director – Sibling films. A very neat story based on an old story the directors (brothers) had heard as children. It was leant an extra dimension by being shot abroad, though appearing to be set in England.

The Stomach – directed by Ben Steiner. A slightly gruesome but fun body shock style story, with an interesting psychic element and a great cast.

Tin and Tina – directed by Rubin Stein. I loved this story. It was shot almost entirely with one camera angle. The children were fascinating and the story unfolded at a steady, controlled pace. It was all subtitled (original in spanish) and I did wonder if there were some cultural symbolism I wasn’t quite getting, but regardless it was a chilling film that left me with a lot of questions.

All in all it was great to see such a variety of films and film makers from a variety of backgrounds with access to widely different range of resources.

Like this:

More wonderful news for The End! After having won the Limelight Film Awards ‘Best Horror’, the film was selected for the Phoenix Film Festival (Leicester, England) and also for the OshKosh Horror Film Festival in Wisconsin, USA.

We also just received the news that The End has been selected for the British Horror Film Festival to be held in Leicester Square, London, England this October. The Brilliant crew at We Are Heroes Films have remastered the sound for this prestigious event and also put together this trailer….http://vimeo.com/106965525

The End

It’s been a long time since I worked on this short film script and saw it go into production. It was very a very surreal experience sitting in the gorgeously decadent, art deco venue, The Troxy, in London’s east end watching a clip of our film played as the nominations were read out.

There was so much talent at the award ceremony, including of course my fellow film makers – Director and Producer, Raj Pathak, from We Are Heroes Films, cinematographer, Louis Vella and special effects aficionado Nik Karma from N-FX. The two actresses also attended the ceremony; Shelley Draper (who provided an immensely compelling performance of the mother in the film) and Eva Nicholson who played her daughter. Director, Crash Taylor unfortunately couldn’t attend the event.

(My one regret is that we didn’t get pictures of the event – we all went up as a team to receive the award and the official photographs have never been released of all the winners. Note to the organisers – there’s a lot of PR each of the film awards winners would probably love to generate for the awards, so its a shame these haven’t been available!)

Of course for us this isn’t The End – but only the beginning of the end. With a feature length film script already written, a crew that’s raring to go all that’s left is to gather together more investment – I say ‘all that’s needed’ of course this is one of the trickiest elements of getting a film made. I’ve no doubt it will be another long wait…. but it will be worth it!

A couple of days ago I got the fabulous news from Film Director, Raj Pathak (We are Heroes Films), that we’ve been nominated for an award at the Limelight Film Awards, due to be held on June 9th! It’s a highly prestigious event to be held in the Troxy, a beautiful Art Deco venue in East London.

Not surprisingly we’re nominated in the Horror category – and if we go through and win ‘Film of the Night’ then we’ll get a massive £10,000 production budget – as you can imagine I’m hoping this might go towards making the feature length version! It’s especially good timing as I’ve just submitted the completed script to We Are Heroes.

Even if we don’t win, the nomination alone is exciting and has only been made possible by the combination of such wonderful talents as Crash Taylor, Raj Pathak and N-FX special effects. Not to mention the amazing crew and actors – especially Shelley Draper, who really brought all the emotion of her character off the paper and onto the screen.

Although I’m not able to be there, I’m delighted to promote the sequel to ‘Don’t Go In the Basement’ event. A free night of shorts from Nottingham and the surrounding areas. No theme this time, so it’ll be a proper mixed bag. There will be music video’s, live action shorts, animations and other surprises. You will laugh, you will cry and naturally, given our obsession with horror, there will be some scares along the way.

My zombie short The End will be screening there. (I’m busy writing the prequel so no rest for the wicked!)